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Do gun shows raise suicide and homicide rates?

16Sep2010

Gun control advocates argue that because sales at gun shows are much less regulated than other sales, such shows make it easier for potential criminals to obtain a gun. Similarly, one might be concerned that gun shows would exacerbate suicide rates by providing individuals considering suicide with a more lethal means of ending their lives.

On the other hand, proponents argue that gun shows are innocuous since potential criminals can acquire guns quite easily through other black market sales or theft.

…we use data from Gun and Knife Show Calendar combined with vital statistics data to examine the effect of gun shows. We find no evidence that gun shows lead to substantial increases in either gun homicides or suicides. In addition, tighter regulation of gun shows does not appear to reduce the number of firearms-related deaths.

That is evidence from Texas and California from Mark Duggan, Randi Hjalmarsson, and Brian Jacob. They take care to point out that their estimates are short term and localized.

I would have imagined the number of guns in the area are in equilibrium before the gun show. Does a gun show create a discontinuous change in the actual number of guns used?

Of course, questions like these might be answered if I had the time to carefully read all the papers I blog.

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Our local paper (Sydney, Australia) reports today the shooting at Johns Hopkins hospital. Every report of gun violence in the US makes me glad for our very restrictive gun laws which give Australia one of the lowest rates of gun homicide in the world.

Questions about gun shows and homicide/suicide levels seems bizarre from this perspective. One can only feel pity for a society that is locked into the negative spiral of gun ownership. The more you have, the more you need.

Gillian,
That is classic argument by anecdote. The western country with the lowest crime rate is Switzerland– which gives fully automatic assault rifles to all adult men to take home and put in the closet. Similarly, the Westernized country with some of the tightest gun laws- Japan- has the highest suicide rate.

Michael,
Not quite anecdote… though I suspect that we put credence in the data that supports our views. Here’s [http://www.gun-control-network.org/GF10.htm] a London-based source that puts US gun homicide rates at 3.92 per 100,000, compared with Australia at 0.27.

So the US has a gun homicide rate 14 times Australia. But not as bad as Columbia which tops the list at 49.52 deaths per 100,000.

You can dismiss it as anecdote, but the stats support the value of restricting access to guns.

Yes, Japan has a high suicide rate, but guns don’t feature in the most common methods of suicide… “Common methods of suicide are jumping in front of trains, leaping off high places, hanging, or overdosing on medication.”

Switzerland — maybe not homicide, but “Some 300 deaths per year are due to legally held army ordnance weapons, the large majority of these being suicides.” That’s in a population of 7.6 million.

Gilian,
Please give me a citation for “the stats support the value of restricting access to guns.” This is actually a topic that has been studied quite extensively, and most studies (not funded by politically motivated groups like the Joyce foundation) show an outcome that is surprisingly muddled. There are some very high crime rate jurisdictions with strict gun control, and there are low crime rate countries with lax control. As mentioned before, Switzerland has a lower homicide rate than Australia, despite some of the highest gun densities of any country. This issue is actually pretty complicated, not just in teasing out causation vs correlation, but definitions of homicide and reporting rates vary quite widely nation to nation, and city to city. Mostly, crime seems to be more affected by culture than by anything else.

The point of econometrics, and of research in general, is to tease out fact from intuition. I know that gun control is one of those things that “seems” obvious, but that is the joy of the scientific pursuit. Your comment about the shooting at John’s Hopkins seems especially ironic, as Maryland has some of the toughest gun control. The Brady Campaign (an anti-gun group) ranks Maryland as having the 5th strongest laws in the US.

I’m also somewhat confused by your comment about the “negative spiral of gun ownership”. Crime rates have been decreasing quite significantly in the US over the past several decades, even while gun laws have loosened dramatically and the economy has worsened.

Gillian,
Just to back up my position, here is the most widely cited study on the matter, a CDC survey of the literature of the effectiveness of gun laws:
“During 2000–2002, the Task Force on Community Preventive Services (the Task Force), an independent nonfederal task force, conducted a systematic review of scientific evidence regarding the effectiveness of firearms laws in preventing violence, including violent crimes, suicide, and unintentional injury… The Task Force found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws or combinations of laws reviewed on violent outcomes.”http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm

I’m an Associate Professor of Political Science & International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. I use field work and statistics to study poverty, political engagement, the causes and consequences of violence, and policy in developing countries. [Read more]